More Colorado policymakers are joining in a call for a serious conversation about guns, part of a national momentum in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

At the end of a week in which many U.S. mayors and both Colorado U.S. senators addressed the issue, Tom Mauser stood in his son Daniel's worn-out Vans sneakers at a news conference with three lawmakers at the state Capitol.

Mauser always wears Daniel's shoes when he speaks publicly about his son's murder at Columbine High School.

"Despite what we have been through, we want hopefulness, not excuses," Mauser said Friday. "We want a plan for something better. We want conversation, and we want action."

Daniel was killed April 20, 1999. Since then, Mauser has pushed for gun regulation and fought against statements from such organizations as the National Rifle Association, which he says blame the victim.

"We will hear clichés like 'Guns don't kill people; people kill people'; we will hear denials about the seriousness of assault rifles; we will hear victims blamed," he said. "But most of all, we will hear a lot of messages of hopelessness, how we're just a dangerous society. It isn't true."

Standing in solidarity with Mauser and three family members of Aurora theater-shooting victim AJ Boik, three Colorado legislators tearfully pledged to sponsor gun regulations.

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"I want the families to know that I feel your pain, and I also have your back," said state Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora. "I'm going to be moving beyond a moment of silence into taking a plan of action."

Fields' own son, Javad Marshall-Fields, was shot and killed in 2005.

Fields was flanked by state Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, and state Rep. Beth McCann, D-Denver, who all agreed that comprehensive gun- control laws limiting access to "weapons of war," such as AK-47 assault rifles, need to be enacted immediately.

Carroll responded to statements made earlier in the day by NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre, who said a solution to the mass shootings is having armed guards in schools to protect against inevitable criminals.

"The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," LaPierre said in Washington, D.C., Friday.

Carroll, however, said guns in schools is not a solution; it's a decoy from the real issue.

"Even the most ardent gun supporters have always recognized that it's about keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals," she said. "If you're going to respect law-abiding citizens' rights to own firearms, you have to have a way of keeping weapons out of the hands of dangerous people."

Many Colorado Republicans agree that changes must be made to gun policy but argue that inhibiting the public's ability to purchase guns creates a dangerous society where criminals are armed but victims are not.

"There isn't further gun regulation out there that would prevent these tragedies from happening," said state Rep. Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs. "If I thought there was some future gun regulation that would make my children safer at school, I would be the prime sponsor of that legislation."

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, collected more than 750 mayoral signatures on a petition that was sent to President Barack Obama. The document suggested tougher background checks, making gun trafficking a federal crime, removing high-capacity rifles and ammunition magazines from the market, prosecuting those who attempt to buy those weapons despite that ban, and other "common sense" changes.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed the letter first, as coalition co-chairs. Thirteen Colorado mayors from Denver to Telluride are among those who signed.

One day later, Colorado's two U.S. senators, Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, both Democrats, released their statements on gun control.

Both senators stressed the importance of preserving the Second Amendment but called for restrictions on the availability of "combat weapons," and a need for increased support for mental-health patients.

Udall added that our society needs to think even broader, to "solutions that examine our culture's glorification of violence."

At the news conference Friday, David Hoover, a Lakewood police officer, remembered his nephew A.J. with his arm around his weeping sister, A.J.'s mother, Theresa.

He said, "Enough is enough."

He said guns are a responsibility that shouldn't be as common as loaves of bread or easier than adopting a pet.

"If we do nothing from this day forward," Hoover said, "we are all complicit with what happens beyond this day."

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